All aboard as Friar Gate Studios tenants collaborate
to help secure big train deal
Derby is a city well known for its railway connections and has benefited greatly from the success of the industry. In more recent years it is Derby’s blossoming creative industry that is putting us on the map, and it seems fitting then that this particular success story is a result of a collaboration to produce revolutionary train designs.
David Gordon Ltd. have recently helped global aerospace and rail transportation manufacturers Bombardier secure the largest rolling stock order ever placed by Swiss Federal Railways. At 1.3 billion Euros for 59 TWINDEXX trains, which are 436 fully air-conditioned carriages providing over 36,000 seats, Bombardier bid to get the project and beat all the competition, with the skills of Friar Gate Studios’ tenants backing them up.
David Gordon and his team designed the exterior and parts of the interior of the high speed double-decker trains that are set to reduce travel times, improve customer comfort, and not forgetting, look extremely impressive. According to David, the first step when designing a product like this is to consider the people, culture and architecture of the country. ‘The Swiss have a clearly defined character which helps – they’re all about high-tech, refined looks with close attention to quality and detail’. From hand drawn sketches to computer models, David liaised with Bombardier offices in Berlin to perfect the design. ‘The Aerodynamicists said they wanted sharper edge transition lines on the front nose to improve cross wind stability and we saw this as an opportunity to make the trains look faster and slightly more aggressive, so we redesigned and remodelled’.
Over the years David has become specialised in transportation, and has worked with Bombardier on many occasions. Their most exciting collaboration for him so far would have to be working on the ZEFIRO family of trains, successfully purchased by China railways last year, that promote extremely high speeds and low energy consumption. He’s also developed a close relationship with Mathew Such of Mediasphere, another Friar Gate Studios based company, who takes care of the visualisation on most of their projects. Mathew’s software worked to make the images that featured in the winning campaign appear more realistic, and at that point they could be Photoshopped onto awe-inspiring Swiss landscapes by David and his colleagues. All this was done to help sell the designs and technology by creating a glimpse of what they’d be like in action.
Next to get on board were animators, and neighbours, Boxframe. Together with colleagues Andy Ross and Mark Such, Kevin Cooney concentrated on bringing the presentation material to life, working on the finer details of the images to make them stand out. ‘They’d seen what we do, mostly promos and animation sequences, and wanted a motion design eye. We brought the elements together’. Proud of their contributions to the prestigious deal, Kevin added ‘any job that gets good exposure will always benefit you as a company, and having different types of creative businesses under one roof that can work together benefits us all’.
Mark Burrows of Word of Mouth Creative was the last stop for the project; he was called upon to add the sound effects and music to the presentation video. ‘When I’d done the DVD Matt said to me ‘the president of Switzerland is going to see this tomorrow’ and I said ‘really!?’ – it’s good kudos’. Andrew Upton, the other half of Word of Mouth Creative, writes scripts while Mark deals more with recording the voices and adding other sounds to the projects they work on. ‘We’ve also worked with other tenants here, including Waldercom, where we helped with health and safety videos. They can sit down with us while we’re working; it’s nice to do things face-to-face.’ Mark enjoys the friendly environment at the Studio. ‘We’re all in the same boat – all small businesses trying to make it, there’s definitely a community spirit.’
David looks forward to collaborating with fellow tenants further on his work for Bombardier. ‘Derby’s had quite a rejuvenation’ as Mark puts it, and Friar Gate Studios is proud to provide a place for small businesses to benefit from each other’s expertise while the city continues to make a name for itself.